Problem Child
by DieselFire
Summary: The one with the bodyguard. but no celebrity statuses here. nobody's famous in this story. "And don't fucking call me ma'am'."
1. Chapter 1

_Bang Bang Bang!_

This was the nature of the noise that roused Letty Ortiz from her slumber, startled as she was. She flinched against the bright light of day.

 _Bang Bang Bang!_

She'd almost fallen back to sleep when the pounding started again, forcing her to an even more conscious state of wakefulness. She'd only come back from her latest endeavor a mere three hours earlier and was anything but pleased at being woken up at…

 _Seven forty-five?!_ Whoever was pounding on her door was in for a world of hurt. She stood from her bed, pulling on an oversized plaid button-down and padded towards the door.

 _Bang Bang Bang!_

"Fucking WHAT?" Letty demanded as she pulled the door open, one eye still squeezed shut against the bright early morning sunlight. She slammed the door shut within a nanosecond, muttering, "It's too early for this shit."

 _Bang Bang Bang!_

"Open the door, Ms. Ortiz."

 _Ms. Ortiz?_ This guy had been sent by her father. Letty groaned and went back to the door, pulling it open.

"What did I do?" She asked, motioning for him to come inside. "It's too fucking early for this so what the fuck did I do?"

The guy smirked at her before speaking.

"I'm your new bodyguard." Letty stared at him, both eyes wide open now.

"My _what_?" She didn't need a bodyguard and she said as much. "In case my father has failed to notice, I'm twenty-five years old. I'm a big girl, don't need a bodyguard."

"Your father thinks you do and I'm just here to do the job," was the response her "bodyguard" gave. "We can do this the hard way, you fighting me every step of the way, or the easy way, you just letting me do my job and neither of us has to catch any grief about it from your dad."

"So what, you gonna camp outside my door till my old man tells you otherwise? Hate to break it to you but in this building that's gonna raise more than a few eyebrows, ya know?" Letty said as she moved into the kitchen area of her apartment. The man followed, watching as Letty set up the coffee maker and pushed the "brew" button multiple times as if willing it to make the machine work any faster than possible. "You want a cup?" She asked as she pulled a mug from a cabinet.

"What?"

"Coffee."

"Oh," Coffee. "Sure."

"You know, why my father decided I need a bodyguard _now_ is beyond me." Letty said as the coffee maker finished with a sputter-like noise. "You…I've seen you before. Who are you, anyway?"

"Name's Toretto, ma'am."

"You got a first name, Toretto?" Letty asked, placing both mugs on the counter and grabbing the cream from the mini-fridge. "Cream?"

"Ma'am?"

"Coffee. Do you like cream with your coffee?" Letty asked, adding the white liquid to her own cup. "And then I asked you if you had a first name."

"Yes. Coffee. With cream." Dom said, taking the carton of creamer Letty held out in his direction. "And the name's Dom."

"And you're my bodyguard." She said, looking him over. Sure, he was ripped, reasonably good-looking, and clearly something other than white; that much seemed to be the list of criteria for her father's henchmen. "You look barely old enough to drink, man."

"Would you rather have some pasty white guy who can barely benchpress his own weight for your bodyguard, ma'am?" Dom asked dryly.

"No, I'd rather not have one at all!"

"Mr. Ortiz doesn't quite seem to care. I'm just here to do a job, ma'am." Dom said as he moved to the counter, picking up two pink packets. He ripped them open and emptied the contents into his mug.

Letty gaped at him.

"So what, just because my dad made you my bodyguard doesn't mean you have to be such a smart ass…" was the only retort the Latina was able to come up with. "Ya know, most of his goons are usually too stupid to drink anything but beer."

"I'm not most of them."

"Nah, you definitely seem smarter than they are for the most part." She almost grinned at him as he turned around. "How'd you wind up the unlucky guy guarding Eduardo's daughter?"

"Your old man's crew offered me protection in prison," came the quiet answer. She stared at him.

"You kill somebody?"

"Almost." Still quiet. "Beat a man so bad he's gotta take the bus to work at a high school as a janitor every day…" Another long pause followed. "Two years in Lompoc."

Shit.

"And now he's got you babysitting me as repayment." Letty deadpanned.

"'Least I ain't gotta change your diapers or nothin'."

"Like that would have been a problem." Letty snorted. "So what, you just gotta watch me all day? How does this whole bodyguard deal work?"

"You go about your life, and I make sure it doesn't change." He replied simply, taking a drink from his cup.

"And what if I straight up don't want you anywhere near me or my life?" Letty said, fingers tapping against the mug in her hands.

"Unfortunately there ain't nothin' I can do about that one." Toretto said gruffly. "'Less you wanna take it up with your dad."

"You say that like we don't both already know no matter how much screaming I do or how much shit gets thrown, I'm not gonna get my way. End of story."

"Then I guess you're just gonna have to put on your big girl panties and deal with it, huh?" Toretto had the nerve to smirk at her as he said this.

"The very fact that you're even thinking about my panties five minute after having met me says that, despite your insistence that you're not like the rest of my old man's goon squad, you actually are exactly like them."

"Kid, you might think I'm just as bad as those fucks, but ask almost any woman I ever been with, and they'll tell ya I can be just as good." There was that fucking smirk again. "You know, in case you suddenly acting like one of those frilly girls who can't stand getting grease or oil or whatever under their nails."

Letty's eyes followed his, landing on her right hand. There went the argument that he didn't know what kind of girl she was.

"Fuck off. If you're done fucking up my morning, I'm going back to bed. I had a late night."

Dom sighed and leaned back against the kitchen counter when he heard Letty's footsteps returning toward the kitchen.

"And don't fucking call me 'ma'am'."

And that was how Leticia Ortiz met her bodyguard, Dominic Toretto, ex-con and her apparent new shadow.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: For Desi. Hope you're well, boo.**

When Letty awoke some hours later, it wasn't of her own will. It was due to a horrendous noise coming from what would have been her living room, if the rest of her apartment outside of the designated sleeping area was constructed of actual walls.

She sat up, not moving in the event that the noise was a one-time thing.

It wasn't.

When she heard it again, she climbed out of her bed to investigate the sound.

At first she was confused why there was a _man_ asleep on her couch.

Then she was irritated as she remembered that she now had a _bodyguard_.

She only grew angrier when she realized that the noise that woke her from her sleep was coming from the man sleeping on her couch.

Shuffling into the kitchenette, she filled the now empty percolator with water before returning to stand over the couch and emptying the contents of the pot over her bodyguard's head.

"WHAT THE HELL?!" boomed from the bald man as he bolted up right, sputtering.

"You and your fucking **snoring** woke me up. What part of _late night_ did you not understand?" Letty snapped, hands on her hips. "I can deal with having a bodyguard I can't get rid of without his say so. But the fucking SNORING!"

"I don't snore." Toretto retorted, using his previously discarded shirt to dry his face. "The fuck's wrong with you, you can't just shake a man awake, gotta try and drown him instead?"

"A little water never killed anybody. Least not that I ever heard of. You don't drown in the shower or when you wash you face, do ya?" Came the retort from his charge as she made for the door.

"The fuck you think you're goin'?"

"Out. To check the mail like any other human being does on a daily basis."

"Not without me you ain't." Toretto's longer legs beat Letty to the door. "What part of protecting you is _my job_ do you not comprehend?"

"Oooh. Look at that. A word with three syllables. Want ice 'fore you fry your brain?"

"Very funny." Toretto crossed his arms over his chest, which caused his biceps to bulge, which led to Letty realizing just how ripped her 'captor', of sorts, really was.

 _Was that why Eduardo chose him?_

Apparently she'd stare just a little too long.

"See somethin' you like… _ma'am_?"

"What you got between your legs ain't any interest to me at the moment…" Letty said, smirking at him. "At least not if you judge by my current 'flavor', so to speak."

"What, you sayin' if I got to protect _you_ that I gotta watch his…her… _their_ backs too?" Dom all but groaned at the prospect of having a twofer on his hands.

"Aww you almost sound scared." It took everything Letty had in her not to bust out laughing. "Don't worry about it. It ain't like that."

Taking advantage of his stunned silence, Letty ducked around him and made for the door. She'd barely made it to the front door of the building before the door was slammed shut from behind her.

"What part of protecting your ass is my job do you not understand?" Toretto growled from behind her, his breath hot on the skin of her ear.

"I thought we agreed that **you** were going to just stay out of my way." Letty growled back, attempting to forcefully open the door against the man's seemingly brute strength. "Look, man, i just wanna go for a fucking walk. By myself. Is that really so much to ask?"

"Until whatever or whoever your old man deems a threat is over or dead, **yes**." Dom sighed moving away from Letty just slightly. "Look, why don't we take that walk you wanted and just…fuck, I don't know, get to know each other or somethin', since we're going to be seeing a fuck ton of each other."

Letty groaned and turned, heading back up the stairs to her apartment.

"You want me to play twenty questions. What are you, twelve?" She couldn't help the roll of her eyes as she flung open the door and charged through it with Dom hot on her heels.

"What, you don't wanna know all my deep dark secrets?"

"I think I need alcohol for this."

"You hate your old man or do you just enjoy makin' that vein in his forehead look like it's about to bust open?"

"Like I said earlier, I'm a big girl and I can take care of myself." Then she paused, and a smirk played at the corner of her lips. "Makin' that vein bulge up is just an added bonus."

"What, you ain't gonna ask a question? Though that was how this stupid game was s'posed to work. Ain't played since i was in junior high or somethin'."

"What did you do to catch my old man's attention? Most of his goons tend to think that any job having anything to do with me is punishment for something."

"I'm a need somethin' strong to get through this one." Dom said, dropping onto the couch, pinching the bridge of his nose. Letty shuffled into the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of tequila from the cabinet over the fridge.

She sat down across from him, atop the coffee table and poured the shot glass in her hand nearly to the brim, her hand steady as she held it out to him. He took the shot and downed it without hesitating, only to hold it back out to her, a wordless request for another.

It took another four shots of liquor before Dominic spoke again.

"I beat a man half to death with a torque wrench." His voice was so soft that Letty would have missed it completely had there been any other sound in the space. "Guy has to take a bus to work. Janitor at some high school now."

Letty poured another shot, this one for herself, and another as she listened to Dominic's story.

"I did two years in Lompoc for that." Letty stood, setting the bottle on the table and quickly moved into the kitchen, this time coming back with two tumblers. She poured both halfway full, downing hers quickly before refilling it. "It was about a year into my sentence when your old man's crew approached me. Said they'd been watchin' me since I got there."

Letty's pulse raced the longer Dom spoke. She'd never asked these kinds of questions of any of her father's other men, hadn't cared enough to bother with it.

So why was she asking them now, of this one?

"Said they had a job for me, if I was interested. They'd offer me protection in return…not just for me, but for my baby sister, Mia, too." That caught Letty's interest. As far as she knew, none of the other goons had ever even mentioned having family someplace else, let alone by name. "Bigger I got, the more persistent they got 'bout me joinin' up with them." His face went dark, darker than anything Letty had ever seen in her life. "Gave some of the most savage beat downs of my life in there, for your old man."

Letty surprised herself by putting her hand on his, barely noticing in that moment the size difference between his and her own.

"You don't have to keep tellin' this story if you don't want to." She said quietly. He looked at her for a moment, then spoke again.

"He chose me to be your bodyguard 'cause he said I understood the meaning of family, of defending and protecting it at all costs, and the pain that comes with losing someone you care about more than life itself. Who'd he lose?"

They stared at each other for a long moment.

"What's your sister like?" Letty countered as if Dominic hadn't spoken a word. "Most of _Eduardo_ 's goons don't talk much…let alone mention that they have any family to speak of."

"She's, uh…she's pre-med at UCLA…professors say she's at the top of her class or something." Letty couldn't miss the look of pride on his face. "Probably go anywhere she wanted, if we had the money for it."

"Always scholarships and shit, right?" Letty asked, setting her empty tumbler on the table between them. "Think my old man would give anything to have me doin' anything but what I'm doing."

"And just what is it he thinks you're doin'?"

"Freelance this, that or the other, I guess," Letty shrugged. "Like you said, he's all about family, supposedly anyway. Guess he'd rather have me someplace where he can get to me in a heartbeat if…" Dom leaned forward as if Letty were about to dispense some piece of priceless information. "But anyway, I'm a big girl, take care of myself."

"But that's not what you're really doing, is it? That freelance bullshit?" Dom moved to sit beside her on the couch. "Most freelancers I've ever heard of, specially _your_ age, don't have places like this unless they've got sweet contracts. Or they're doin' something on the side they don't want nobody else to know about."

"And what exactly is your opinion, Kevin Costner?"

"I think you're up to somethin', but if you wanna keep the bullshit act up, that's all good." Dom leaned back against the couch, arms folding back behind his head, not-so-subtly flexing, just to press Letty's buttons.

Letty scowled at him before turning on her heel and shuffling back into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Dom could only smirk at her retreating form.


End file.
